Via Slashfood comes some great news today: Alton Brown has signed on for another three years with Food Network. This is great news! His simple, classic approach to food has made cooking good food from real ingredients a reality for me. I hope we have his quirky, blonde brand of cooking [...]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Simplest Chicken Soup
03-Jan-08Everyone knows how to make chicken soup, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. If everyone knew how easy this was, why on earth would there be cans of salt lining grocery shelves, passing themselves off as “chicken soup?” No thanks.
I used the dark meat leftovers from Sunday’s roast chicken. The legs and thighs were [...]
Pumpkin-Maple Cookies for the New Year
02-Jan-08We have now eaten all of the cookies, brownies, pecan toffees, butterscotch balls, chocolate Santas, and miniature candy canes in the house. The holidays are officially over, and I’m going through sugar withdrawal.
We had most of a can of pumpkin puree in the fridge, left over from eggless muffins. Because I was [...]
Happy new year!
A friend of mine told me that in 2008, he would like to be more confident in the kitchen. He’s been considering taking a cooking class to help. Not a bad idea, really.
But here’s the problem: it depends on the class. Many cooking classes I’ve read descriptions for only [...]
Early Morning Pumpkin Raisin Muffins
31-Dec-07I had a meeting with a business partner at ten in the morning. He promised coffee, and I promised healthy baked goods. But I rolled out of bed behind schedule, at eight o’clock, after staying up late playing stupid computer games. (If you must know: Oregon Trail on Facebook, in which [...]
My Food Resolutions for 2008
30-Dec-071. Learn about and cook more Maine food.
A lot of good food comes out of my kitchen, but there’s not much that’s specifically about Maine flavors, except the produce and local meat and fish. In 2008, I’d like to figure out more of what constitutes a Maine flavor to food. Given the [...]
Dinner Tonight: Easy Spicy Broccoli
29-Dec-07This was the other dish I used the cast iron skillet for, over our brief Christmas visit. At home, we often make this as dinner, served over some quinoa, but for our Szechuan-themed Christmas eve dinner, it was a fine accompaniment to peanut chicken and a cucumber salad with rice wine vinegar.
Versatile, easy, delicious, [...]
Pear-Ginger Upside-Down Skillet Cake
28-Dec-07We travelled to visit our very good friends outside of Boston for Christmas. I brought my 12″ cast iron skillet. Over the course of the visit, I wound up using it for bacon, sauteéing turkey livers, and at least one or two other applications.
But general-purpose uses aren’t why I brought the skillet. [...]
Well, it’s been quite a crazy two weeks, hasn’t it? My work life has taken a turn for the weird, we successfully navigated the winter holiday festivities, and meanwhile, Portland keeps getting buried under more and more snow.
Barb and I got the annual holiday cookie deliveries on the Friday before Christmas. The [...]
Yesterday, while the weather was busy snowing and sleeting and generally causing unhappiness for travellers, I spent the day in the kitchen. I emptied out the chicken carcasses I’d been saving in the freezer and made chicken stock; what better use for a cold, wintery day than eight hours of simmering chicken bones?
I also [...]